An Urbane, New Urban City Corner - open, restful, delightful
On this corner site, flanked by three busy main roads, sat a Chicago school styled building. It was build to the property line restricting movement for pedestrians around it and across the arteries.
After 20 years of reports and bureaucratic wrangling, including a battle of conservationists against modernists, it was finally felled to a sigh of urban relief. The new building, a condominium with retail at grade sits back from the property line and the plan takes advantage of the natural site grade to create an urban, people-friendly space. The speculators property corners of the grid gave way to a new idea: speculating on the citizen’s appreciation of urbane spaces and so raising property values to compensate for the high value of land.